Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

Well, I was thinking I’d better send a little note to Mr. Buras but first I had to collect the impedimenta the kids had left on the playground—the latest thing was pornographic telescopes—and then we had arithmetic which is always a strain on me because I’ve never really adjusted to the fact that ¼ + ¼ = ½.

Anyway, by two o’clock I was just getting around to the note and had five fraction problems on the board for the children to do—when the door opened and in he walked.

I didn’t like the way he walked.

Nor the way he looked.

Cough medicine, to my knowledge, does not produce this effect.

“He’s drunk,” someone whispered.

“Nah, crazy,” someone else whispered and I gave them my Look which, after several months, was really getting rather good.

It’s too bad fifth-grade children know what drunkenness is. But they do, you know. You have to resign yourself to all sorts of things about children.

I gave the man my Look, too, and he appeared very ill at ease, because sometimes even grown people feel overawed when they walk into a school. Especially the kind of grown people who used to get called to the principal’s office all the time.

“I come,” he began, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Come for my son.”

I looked around the room. There was David Mines, a shy child strung too tall for his weight, sitting immobile. Only tears moved in his eyes. That would be the one.

“School is not out until three o’clock,” I said. “Unless there is some unusual reason I cannot let David go.” Normally, of course, I wouldn’t even question a parent coming for a child early. But not with that expression on David’s face.

“Got a reason,” Mr. Mines said. “My boy. David!” he called to the boy. But he was unsure of himself. He was a man used to being pushed around. It was obviously hard for him to stand on his own two feet.

Literally and figuratively.

“Sit down, David!” I said peremptorily. A thought was coming to me with cold horror. And it was such a bad thought I tried to hide from it. But I could not.

“Sit down, please, Mr. Mines,” I continued, in the same tone I used with David. “In the last desk on the row next to the windows.” Because I recalled the recent case of the man who set off a bomb in a school yard. And although everybody did what they could and did what was expected and the school authorities were not to be blamed —well, perhaps it might be better in such a case not to do what was to be expected.

Like... like what?

Of course, I had no real reason to think Mr. Mines had set a bomb anywhere. Maybe he’d just come to take David for a dental appointment and what with the cough medicine and my authoritative attitude, he was too confused to say so.

On the other hand, I could feel there was something odd about the whole thing.

The proper thing to do was send the man to Mr. Buras.

In which case Mr. Buras would see only two choices. Put the man out, by force if necessary, if he seemed dangerously drunk, or take David out of school and make him go with his daddy. And why not, except for my intuition?

Mr. Mines sat there, overflowing the little desk, his feet shifty, some internal discomfort making a line between his brows.

“Please wait a few moments, Mr. Mines. We have our spelling lesson now and it’s very important that David should not miss it. Children, get out your spellers.”

We had had our spelling lesson, of course, at eleven o’clock in the morning.

Not a child betrayed me. The room was silent as the grave.

“Page thirty-four,” I said. And the monotonous chant began. “Desert, d-e-s-e-r-t.” What was I going to do? What was Mr. Mines thinking, sitting there? If only I could read his ... Jerome!

send me jerome, I wrote on a slip of paper.

“Who’s the messenger for today?” I asked, as casually as possible, between Government and Guide.

Joyce stood up, her lightboned face a little pink with excitement, but shoulders square and fully up to whatever responsibility I was going to put on her.

Mr. Mines was looking suspiciously at the note.

“It’s for Miss Fremen in the fourth grade,” I told Joyce, loud enough for all to hear. “Tell her it’s for the book lists.”

Miss Fremen might well wonder what Jerome had to do with the book lists. But Miss Fremen was not one to waste time satisfying idle curiosity on a busy school day.

“l-a-u-g-h, laugh!”

Mr. Mines didn’t have anything with him that looked like a bomb. But it would have been easy enough for him to sneak a suitcase in when classes were going on after lunch and hide it somewhere. In a lavatory or a broom closet.

I could just let him take David out and have the school searched. But suppose it was where no one could find it?

Or I could ask Mr. Buras to clear the school. On what grounds? That David’s daddy looked like a bum? In this neighborhood a good third of the daddies looked like bums. Hell, they are bums. Mr. Buras couldn’t clear the school every time one of them came around—not that this kind of daddies make a habit of coming around.

Mr. Mines was watching the clock, his face silvery with perspiration where the sun caught it. Every time the clock hand jumped another minute Mr. Mines passed his hand over his forehead.

“Spelling lesson’s over,” he said, when we got to “yule.” He stood up uncertainly. “C’mon, David.”

“David may not be excused yet,” I said firmly. “We have to make a sentence with each of the words.”

Mr. Mines stood there, awkward, by the little desk. “Then I’ll have to leave without him.”

Why not?

The room was so quiet you would have thought all the children had stopped breathing at once.

“Thunk!” went the minute hand of the clock.

“You may not be excused,” I snapped, sure this would not work, wondering where I got that kind of nerve.

Mr. Mines sat back down, his eyes dull. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. Then he looked at the clock and stood up again. “How long?” he asked, and he wiped at the edge of his mouth.

“Half an hour,” I said. I gripped the end of a ruler tightly in my right hand and stood in front of the class, tapping the ruler into the palm of my left hand. “Delia,” I said, “make a sentence with ‘automatic’ showing you know what the word means.”

“Thunk!” went the minute hand of the clock as Delia stood up and the class waited for her somewhat ponderous mind to get into action.

Where was Jerome?

“Half an hour’s too long,” Mr. Mines said.

“Automatic,” said Delia slowly, “we have an automatic defroster on our refrigerator.”

“Um,” I said. “You used the word right, but can someone else give us a sentence to show what the word means?”

Several hands went up.

Mr. Mines was edging across the back of the room.

Where was Jerome?

“Just a moment,” I said, slapping the ruler hard against my palm.

“Have to get out of here,” he said. But he was edging slowly, moving his feet carefully, as though he thought this was making him invisible.

“Please stay where you are a moment,” I said. “Emily, let us hear your sentence.”

“An automatic dishwasher washes the dishes by itself without you having to do anything,” said Emily with her usual prim correctness. Emily always wore starched plaid dresses with little white collars, and I couldn’t help wondering if this were not what made her right all the time.

“Very good,” I said. “The ‘auto’ part of the word means ‘self.’ Like an automobile is something that runs by itself instead of having to be pulled by horses.” I hunted around in my distracted mind for other “auto” words suitable for the fifth grade.